Pathways to Substance Abuse and Dependence

描述(由申请人提供)： 这项提案代表了对NIDA研究科学家发展奖(K01)的请求，以提供培训和研究经验，将围绕药物滥用和依赖的病因的复杂发展理论与新出现的统计方法相结合。候选人的目标是促进她作为一名独立研究人员的成长，并应用适当和强大的量化方法来完善物质理论，这可能最佳地指导干预努力的发展。因此，申请人寻求在新开发的定量方法的技术方面以及在旨在揭示药物使用障碍发展途径的异质性的纵向研究的规划和设计阶段考虑最先进的统计程序方面进行额外的培训。培训和监督研究的结合为候选人独立沟通不同学科的能力奠定了基础，并最终成为一名独立的研究人员和一个 多学科研究团队。 拟议的研究项目将应用最先进的统计方法来分析新获得的纵向和横断面数据，其中包括衡量迄今可用的最广泛的个人和背景风险因素。目标将是确定多重和突出的风险途径，这些途径将指导药物滥用和依赖风险的个体差异的理论表征。为实现这一目标，将实现以下具体目标： 1)区分导致物质使用障碍的物质使用轨迹与不太严重的使用水平 2)确定可预测最严重后果轨迹的显著且独特的风险星座/路径 3)确定与每条突出风险路径相关的归因风险，以便 评估减少药物滥用和依赖的潜力 将利用来自三个数据集的现有数据，其中包括具有全国代表性的样本和病例对照样本。将使用多种统计技术来研究成长和中介效应，包括基于群体的半参数技术、基于树的方法和不同的潜在类方法。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal represents a request for a NIDA Research Scientist Development Award (K01) to provide training and research experience that will integrate complex developmental theory surrounding the etiology of substance abuse and dependence with newly emerging statistical methods. The candidate's goal is to advance her growth as an independent investigator and to apply appropriate and powerful quantitative methods to the refinement of substance theory that may optimally guide the development of intervention efforts. Thus, the applicant seeks additional training in the technical aspects of newly developed quantitative methods and in the consideration of state-of-the-art statistical procedures in the planning and design phases of longitudinal research aimed at uncovering the heterogeneity of developmental pathways to substance use disorder. The combination of training and supervised research provides the groundwork for the candidate's ability to independently bridge different disciplines and to ultimately function as an independent researcher and as the leading member of a multidisciplinary research team. The proposed research project will apply state-of-the-art statistical methods to the analysis of newly available longitudinal and cross-sectional data that include measurement of the widest array of individual and contextual risk factors available to date. The goal will be to identify multiple and prominent risk pathways that will guide the theoretical characterization of individual differences in risk for substance abuse and dependence. To achieve this goal, the following specific aims will be addressed: 1) Distinguish between substance use trajectories leading to substance use disorder vs. less severe levels of use 2) Identify prominent and unique risk constellations/pathways that predict the most severe outcome trajectories 3) Determine the attributable risk associated with each of the prominent risk pathways in order to evaluate the potential for reduction of substance abuse and dependence Existing data from three data sets will be utilized that include both nationally representative and case-control samples. Multiple statistical techniques for studying both growth and mediational effects will be used including group based semi-parametric techniques, tree-based methods, and diverse latent class approaches.